Gatherers and Hunters (20 page)

Some of the girls were shivering, they had not brought warm clothing, the afternoon had been so sunny and hot. But on the beach suddenly chill airs were stirring and the excuse to cuddle up together was irresistible. In groups, at first, they found themselves huddled, with sauce on their hands and the first rowdy round of popular songs already joining them together jovially.

Jovial, that was the word. There was a sense of lighthearted animation among them as a group. As the flames did subside to the rich embers, someone would every now and then wander into the darkness to search out another log or piece of the pine planking that littered this immensely long beach. The main traffic lanes ran parallel a mile or so out to sea and there was always castoff jetsam here. Sometimes they found the beach littered with hundreds of oranges, water-logged and acid, or else pieces of rope and fishing buoys, some of them made of limpet-encrusted glass. On this particular evening, early, Charlie had brought back and presented to Beatrice a pair of undamaged green glass buoys with their rope netting still perfect and not encrusted.

Beatrice. Yes, she was there and, as the dream continued, Charlie had his arm around her shoulders and she was snuggled in to him so that he sang more lustily and led the chorus in the inevitable hoots of singing commercials from their favourite radio shows. He got up and checked out the two sausages-on-sticks that he had left to cook gently on the very edges of the coals. He brought back two bakelite mugs of flat lemonade. ‘Tea will be ready soon,' he promised.

Yes, such innocence.

He was aware he was luxuriating in the small joyousness of it. Surely in real life that evening had been full of as many little irritations as of pleasures. Mosquitoes. Midges. That chilly little wind off the water. Uncomfortable sandy chafes in the groin. The tiny disappointment of half cooked ­sausages.

No. The memory would have none of that. Everything was blissfully happy and contentment more benign than such ordinary human blemishes could spoil remained the pervasive quality of the whole experience. Charlie found himself smiling, and at that point he had to concede he had been dreaming of some illusion not some past reality.

Beatrice. Curious how she slid, again and again into his thoughts. It was as if the past somehow had not been able to accomplish its intent, as if life had taken a different course than that destiny, in some way, intended.

Alan had moved off to different associations, was it possible Alan even remembered Beatrice, after all these years? She had taken root in Charlie's consciousness, like some uncompleted act, some still unfinished business.

Charlie raised himself from the bed. All this was juvenile, he thought as he scrubbed his teeth, almost too vehemently. Fancy, after all these years, still even thinking of those lost moments. Was this what they described as ‘being haunted?'

He had not been back to the little café on the front, by the Passage, not since that mawkish conversation with the young waiter.

Now he would have to exorcise in some other way this preoccupation with the charming angel of his youth.

+++++

Damn! He had allowed the milk to turn sour; how many days ago had he bought that carton? Never mind. Nothing for it but to get into his car and drive down for a replacement. While he was at it he might as well make it the little supermarket and stock up with whatever else was needed. Charlie felt he had become adept at household arrangements and he crouched down to see if potatoes, onions, tins of beetroot and Two Fruits needed topping up.

Already it was a hot morning. The holiday crowds had suddenly arrived, almost overnight the little town had become a bustling throng, and the most conspicuous addition to the sense of the changed environment was the presence of children. Children and young adults, in pairs and families. They were everywhere.

Instead of the usual quiet perambulation through the shelves of the supermarket, Charlie now felt he had to hurry. Somehow the zipping kids pushing their infant sisters in trolleys and the already overladen mums looking worried over the limp vegetables impacted on the atmosphere. He took out his list and quickly decided on the cold section first.

As he was reaching for his carton of milk he overheard a little group of young people talking in a noisy gabble and for some reason he turned round to inspect them. There, one of the two young women more or less in control of the party, almost within touching distance, was the girl herself.

Beatrice! He almost exclaimed it aloud, but stopped himself. Instead, he did raise himself up straight clutching his milk, and tried to catch her eye. She was too interested in the conversation going on around her to notice this white haired old man, with his red plastic basket and a one litre carton of milk in his hand.

‘Excuse me', he said, too loudly. ‘Excuse me, but there's something I wanted to ask you …'

The other girl, closer to him, looked down. ‘You can't reach the back shelf? Here, I can do that for you what is it you want – sliced cheese?'

‘No, no' he said. ‘I'm not … it's not … can you tell me your name?' He had caught her attention now, the right girl.

‘Beg pardon? You speaking to me?' She had a fairly broad accent, though the vocal tone was musical, almost an echo. ‘You're a bit cheeky for an old fella. Isn't he, Cassie'. But she relented, and was smiling (that smile! That smile!) ‘Now why'd you want to go spoiling a perfect relationship by asking for personal details, mister? You young things just won't take no for an answer, but I tell you this. I don't go giving my name and address to just anybody, but you can call me Trish if you want to. Now say thank you to Cassie for getting you your soapy cheese and top o' the mornin' and a Merry Christmas. You're not Santa himself, in an ocker disguise, are you?'

And they went off together, arm in arm, with the silent young men who had been standing behind them following in their wake. Charlie heard their laughter still as he sheepishly made towards the checkout, forgetting the remaining items on his list. At the top of the tiny pile in the red basket was a pack marked ‘twelve easy-peel slices of Bodalla Tasty Cheddar Cheese'.

He hadn't been rude, or improper in any way. He had not consciously offended her. Why was she so anti-social then? Why was she so antagonistic? Underneath the raillery of her tone he had detected some hidden rancour. Was it directed specifically at him? Or was it somehow more generalised? Was she performing for the benefit of her friend – Cassie, was it? –or for the silent youth lolling behind her, who had said nothing, who had done nothing, who had simply strolled along with the proprietary air of an Italian pimp.

No, Charlie was being altogether too offensive. There was a streak of nastiness in him, he had to admit. It was as if he were lumping all the young people together. Making it a generational thing. Ridiculous!

And why hadn't he offered to explain? It would have been straightforward. Direct and simple.

He had not even managed to get the name ‘Beatrice' out. That might have simplified everything. She would have seen, by that name, there was someone she reminded him of, the sort of thing that surely happens all the time, especially with people around his age, nothing to be ashamed of in that. He felt entirely ashamed.

By the time he reached his car, already over-hot in the sun, that shame had turned to anger. Strangely, though, it was directed to the first of the two young men, a person who did not at all look like the driver of the white sports car the other week.

Swarthy.

Her name was Trish.

Altogether too great a leap of coincidence to think that could in any way be linked to a name like Beatrice. Patricia perhaps? And, looking at her more closely, as he had, it was clear there were other aspects of her features not at all like those he remembered.

The eyebrows, for instance. Beatrice had dark eyebrows, but surely thicker than that. These looked, well, plucked. He couldn't conceive of Beatrice ever considering such affectations; though he had not known her when she was a few years older, around the same age as this girl now.

And why be so aggressive?

He had done nothing to justify that.

It was her scorn, her absolute scorn. That had rankled.

+++++

‘Charles! Charles Brosnan that is you? Over here,' and the plump lady with the blue rinse waved a chubby bare arm in his direction. Charlie had been sitting, finally, at the little coffee shop on Bulcock Beach, which he had decided he must return to. It was silly to allow himself to be – well – intimidated by some young thug in a white shirt and long black trousers.

Bronco, it turned out, was not on duty.

He looked up and saw her in her bright floral sundress and the large, rather elegant, straw hat. He could hardly miss her. She was nobody he could instantly recognise: certainly not someone out of his Melbourne past, in that rig-out. And hardly someone from his young Brisbane years. He would be unrecognisable.

‘Charles Brosnan, fancy seeing you here of all places!' She had now got up and strode over, pulling out a seat for herself. ‘I am right, aren't I? Now don't go telling me I've made another mistaken identity thing, no your very look tells me I'm right. But you don't have to look so stunned. It's Thelma. Thelma Jennings from two doors down.' And she laughed with genuine pleasure as Charlie, all too visibly, made the connection.

‘I know I know. Seeing someone out of context, it happens all the time. But I knew it was you, I recognised Charles Brosnan the instant I set eyes. What are you doing here? Oooh. Oooh idiot me, of course. Poor dear Miriam, Charles I am sooo sorry, I meant to send a condolence but you know how things, and then we did Europe and the awful Trade Tower thing came and stranded us and, one thing and another, well we were relieved to be home and when Bruce said Noosa I said Darling so here we are. Except Bruce is talking investment things with someone at Henzells and Myra and me are left twiddling our cappuccino sugars.'

She hardly paused for breath. Charlie had pulled himself more upright and felt his spine straightening. The Woman From Next Door But One was a pain, but she and Miriam used to have a routine, when Miriam was at home, of having afternoon tea at the Moravia on Burke Road, they had been in the same Professional Women's Association at one stage. In living memory she had moved from fashionable black to dusty bruisey colours, but not yet, in Camberwell, to peacock.

‘Now Charles, how about you? How are you keeping yourself? Are you looking after? I saw the house went up for sale and I had wonders but to see you all the way up here in sunny Queensland, it took the breath, but how ARE you?'

And for a moment he feared she would lean across and give him a pout on the cheek.

But she settled back in her chair and waved for her friend (‘Myra') to come over. She was examining Charlie with paint-stripper eyes.

‘Don't tell me. But why an out-of-the-way place like this? Unless you are a refugee from Noosa as well? You've got a home unit there. You've made a killing with real estate – just like my Bruce – and the views are marvellous aren't they, but the weather! My dear, it's a sauna! Still, when we go back to the saltmines we'll be brown as bandicoots. Or whatever.'

Charlie took a sip of his dead-cold coffee. ‘You're right, it took me a moment to make the connection. Thelma Jennings of course. I really didn't expect to see you in a little place like Caloundra.' He didn't add that Caloundra had seemed a place where his past would not catch up with him. At least, that element of the recent past. ‘I have a unit here, one of the older developments.'

‘You're so wise. And I bet you offered peanuts. It's almost like taking lollies from kiddies, the prices up here. But there you go. And are you actually living here? Or is it your little retreat, your pied-à-terre? Myra, this is Charles Brosnan, our neighbour. Our
FORMER
neighbour.'

‘How do you,' he muttered but he was already feeling hemmed in, indeed, genuinely uncomfortable, though he couldn't quite place why he should feel so antagonistic to Thelma Jennings who had actually been a shot in the arm for Miriam in that last year. She had jollied her along, got her out of herself, though Charlie did recall there had been some personal tragedy in her own life, that boy in Kew who kept on until he was almost twenty-one. Thelma had a way of bringing Miriam out of herself. Miriam, who in the past had never been a one to dwell. No, he had a lot to thank Thelma for, and he must not remain grumpy.

‘Myra, Charles has just joined the legion of sun-seekers, he's nosed out a unit here for almost nothing. We're thinking of a pad somewhere around Southbank ourselves, have you considered that, or have you made a similar killing already? He's such a quiet one, Myra. Still waters run deep, I always said that to Miriam. But, oh Charles I am sorry, I did not mean to come barging in on you dwelling on your loss and poor Miriam. We do miss her, miss her dreadfully actually, but now it's time to keep on living and I applaud you, Charles, I envy you for your strength in making a big move like this. I never in all the years that I knew her heard Miriam even mention Queensland or the Sunshine Coast so it must be a really big thing for you, Charles, this move, getting away from … well, everything. All those memories.'

‘Queensland is where I grew up. I spent my youth. Or at least, until I was eighteen. So it has been a sort of return. Not an escape.'

‘Some things we just have to escape, I understand that Charles, but that's not the word I would use. After someone, well special, like Miriam, I can understand the need to make a break. Make a break. Well, that almost sounds more direful than ‘escape' doesn't it? What is the word I am seeking? Come on Charles, you're the Scrabble champion, what is the word I am seeking?'

‘I think I would say I have come to Caloundra to renew myself, Thelma. Does that seem to you ruthless? I think Miriam would understand it. It is not running away from, more a shuffling towards. At my age you don't run, if you can help it.' And he laughed, sealing off the conversation and the increasing closeness of her antennae, in a way that left only a polite retreat possible. There were excuses, vague indications toward watches, and no invitation for a further round of coffee.